Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
WAVERLEY TEMPERANCE HOTELS LONDON,
SOUTHAMPTON ROW. W. C
TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS,
"ROBSART, LONDON."
TELEPHONE No4131 GERARD. EDINBURGH,
NEW WAVERLEY HOTEL,
WATERLOO PLACE,
TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS,
"IVANHOE EDINBURGH."
TELEPHONE No 1007. GUILDHALL HALL, LONDON.
AT TOP OF KING STREET. CARLTON HILL, EDINBURGH.
OPPOSITE NEW WAVERLEY HOTEL WATERLOO PLACE. OLD WAVERLEY HOTEL, 43 PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH.
TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS "WAVERLEY, EDINBURGH."
TELEPHONE No 1006.
GLASGOW 172, SAUCHIEHALL STREET,
TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS, "WAVERLEY HOTEL, GLASGOW," TELEPHONE No 128." TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS,
"REDGAUNTLET, LONDON." WAVERLEY TEMPERANCE HOTEL,
37 King Street Cheapside LONDON2 July 21 1902. My Dear Mr. Seibel1;
Here is an article3 on one of the most interesting English industries4 I have found. I wish the pictures were better, but our camera is small. We are having the time of our lives, I can assure you. I will try to write Mrs. Seibel5 a long letter from Paris6. Isabelle7 asks to be remembered to you all and I send my love to the entire family8 including Omar9
Faithfully Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0074.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0074
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- George Seibel1
- Date letter was written
- July 21, 1902
- Place letter was written
- London, Greater London, England2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
The British canal system, which ran from Liverpool to London, was owned and operated by several different companies in 1902, including the Regents Canal, the Grand Junction Canal, and the Grand Union Canal.
Person Annotations
Seibel, George (1873-1958). American literary and drama critic.
Cather met Seibel and his wife Helen while working as editor of the
Home Monthly in Pittsburgh in 1896 and 1897. They
regularly studied French and German together, Cather read her work in
progress to him, and George reviewed April Twilights
(1903) in the Pittsburgh Gazette.
Seibel, Helen Hiller (1873-1971). Cather’s Pittsburgh friend.
Born in Pennsylvania to German immigrant parents, Helen Hiller
married George Seibel on 6 September 1894. Their one child, Erna, was born
in 1897. Cather met the couple through George Seibel’s work for the Home Monthly, which Cather was editing. Soon the
three were meeting frequently at the Seibel home, studying and translating
French and German literature. Cather read her own poetry and short stories
to them as well. The Seibel house at 114 S. 17th Street on Pittsburgh’s
South Side served as the model for the home of Alfred Engelhardt and his
uncle in “Double Birthday” (1925).
Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime
friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially
prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress
Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to
reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to
live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung
accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved
to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh,
finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited
New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also
rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together
to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father,
Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist
Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in
1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the
Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather
and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and
1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S.
for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her
death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving
her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work,
through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After
Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to
Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few
letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.
Yorke, Erna Seibel (1897-after 1971). Daughter of Cather’s friends, George and Helen Seibel. Erna Seibel was born in Pittsburgh, PA; Willa Cather was a frequent visitor at her family’s home in her early childhood. She attended Carnegie Tech, studying art. Around 1927 she married Cecil B. Yorke, a writer. They had a son, Duane, and lived in New York in the 1930s, later moving to Santa Cruz, CA. She donated the letters Cather had written to her parents to the Cather Foundation.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"The Canal Folk of England," Nebraska State Journal (August 3, 1902) by Willa Sibert Cather
Omar Khayyam (unpublished) by George Seibel
